Ian Murdock, founder of Debian and also of the DCC Alliance, said Shuttleworth's objections didn't add up to much.

Murdock said the necessary name changes had been made and that most of those involved were ready to move on. “It's a non-issue to all but a handful of people,” he told Techworld. He said the DCC Alliance may acquire a trademark licence to the Debian name and add a Debian reference back in.

He said Shuttleworth appeared to have misunderstood the nature of the technology changes made to the DCC, which he said did not include the linking system and core system libraries.

“We've never claimed that DCC is Debian, only that it's a common core that's as close to pure Debian as possible,” he said. “All else being equal, we do things the Debian way with as little deviation as possible.” The DCC's aim is binary compatibility with pure Debian.